In this presentation, I would like to show my techniques in modeling hardsurface general assets and weapons, providing examples of each step of the process till the final model textured. I will show very cool techniques to achieve high quality models as you will see on the weapons the Art Team created for one of the Ten Square Games' titles.

1. Hard Surface modeling
techniques for games
Pedro Augusto - Senior 3D Artist

2. Hello!
My name’s Pedro Augusto,
I am Senior 3D Artist in
Undead Clash team at TSG!
I’ve been working as a 3D
Artist for more than 21 years,
jumping from Advertising
companies to Game industry
(8-9 years).
Mostly focused on Hard
Surface modeling.

3. Highpoly
modeling
techniques
(game pipeline)
How to achieve high quality results faster
for highpoly meshes.

4. First, asset modeling
games pipeline (briefly)
highpoly Baking / texturing
Lowpoly / retopo

5. Baking process (briefly)
Highpoly is baked on to lowpoly Baking /
texturing
Lowpoly + normal map

6. weapon design
process

7. concepts

8. concepts

9. concepts

10. concepts

11. Before modeling (references)

12. Reference research

13. Reference research

14. Finally…
Modeling techniques
Modeling techniques I use daily to solve hard surface “puzzles”.
■ Boolean + Retopo
■ Boolean + Remesh
■ Mechanical Modeling

15. Boolean + retopo
This technique consists of
understanding the necessary shapes of
positive or negative volumes in order
to create geometries to be used as a
cut/addition and thus obtain the shape
of the final mesh.

16. How does
this work?
Boolean + retopo

17. Pros: Shape and form are already solved
using this technique.
Cons: You need to retopologize to get proper
mesh for final purpose and it can take hours
of work.
Tip: Don't be cheap, give enough geometry
to the objects before Boolean ops.
Boolean + retopo

18. Boolean + retopo

19. Some examples
Boolean + retopo

20. Some examples
Boolean + retopo

21. Some examples
Boolean + retopo

22. Some examples
Boolean + retopo
20,820 tris

23. Boolean + retopo

24. Some examples
Boolean + retopo

25. Some examples
Overall shape Boolean objects Final Result
Basic, but very useful.
Boolean + retopo

26. Some examples
Basic, but very useful.
Boolean + retopo

27. Some examples
Retopology / highpoly Final Result
Basic, but very useful.
Boolean + retopo

28. 19,206 tris
Boolean + retopo
Some examples

29. Some examples
Boolean + retopo
19,206 tris

30. Boolean + remesh
This technique is similar to
previous one, but without
retopo, instead we use
remesh tools to achieve
final highpoly result.

31. How does this work?
Geometry pieces
for Boolean ops Boolean result
Boolean topology
Nice bevels for
baking normals.
High Poly result
Boolean + remesh

32. How does this work?
Boolean + remesh

33. How does this work?
Smooth repeat 100 Smooth repeat 200 Smooth repeat 400
Bevel control with Smooth Modifier
Boolean + remesh

34. Final geometry with normals baked in Substance Painter
Boolean + remesh
Some examples

35. Topology doesn’t matter.
Nice bevels for
baking normals.
Boolean + remesh
Some examples

36. Boolean + remesh
Some examples

37. 30,144 tris
Boolean + remesh
Some examples

38. Boolean + remesh
Some examples

39. Geometry pieces
for Boolean ops
Boolean result
High Poly result
Boolean + remesh

40. Pros: Fast way to achieve high
quality hipoly results / no polygons
nightmares.
Cons: Final mesh can be a little heavy.
Tip: Same as before, don't be cheap!
Boolean + remesh

41. Boolean + remesh
Some examples

42. 18,619 tris
Boolean + remesh
Some examples

43. 18,619 tris
Boolean + remesh
Some examples

44. And finally…

45. Mechanical modeling
This one is about using mechanical modeling
softwares to achieve better HS results.
More solid looking and more precise.

46. Mechanical modeling
/ solid modeling
When the topic is Hard Surface, is this
better than traditional modeling?

47. What do we call
traditional
modeling?
Moving/extruding, etc
vertices, edges and/or faces
to achieve the form we want.

48. How does
mechanical
modeling
works?
We work with solids, we
don't bother to vertices,
edges and faces.

49. polygonal x mechanical
Differences between techniques
Traditional method
Retopo
Final Mesh
8 minutes
15 minutes
POLYGONAL (traditional)

50. Differences between techniques
MECHANICAL (solid Modeling)
Less than 6 minutes
polygonal x mechanical

51. Differences between techniques
MECHANICAL (solid Modeling)
polygonal x mechanical

52. Differences between techniques
MECHANICAL (solid Modeling)
polygonal x mechanical

53. 23,179 tris
Mechanical modeling
Some examples

54. 23,179 tris
Mechanical modeling
Some examples

55. Mechanical modeling
Some examples

56. 23,179 tris
Mechanical modeling
Some examples

57. 23,179 tris
Mechanical modeling
Some examples

58. 23,179 tris
Mechanical modeling
Some examples

59. Questions?

60. Thank You
so much!

61. Boolean + remesh
Some examples

62. 23,179 tris
Boolean + remesh
Some examples

63. 23,179 tris
Some examples
Boolean + remesh